Free Jazz: György Szabados & Miklós Mákó – A Szépség Szive (Fonó Records, 2004) ****½

György Szabados & Miklós Mákó – A Szépség Szive (Fonó Records, 2004)

****½

 

 

On the look-out for new things, I borrowed this album from my media library yesterday, unable to understand anything on the cover or liner notes because everything is in Hungarian. I now know the title means “Heart Of Beauty”, and that’s what this record has to offer indeed. György Szabados plays piano and Miklós Mákó trumpet. The music is refined, sophisticated and adventurous, melancholy at times, abstract at others. Both musicians don’t take the route for easy success or cheap moody effects. They venture together into a musical area that links modern jazz with modern classical music, opening up carefully composed pieces with improvizational adventure, sometimes into areas of atonality, while remainging relatively accessible at the same time. Great musicianship and a strong musical statement.